


The Lights Sure Are Pretty

by RealNocturnalHours



Category: Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware, Slime Rancher
Genre: Fluff, Gen, HLVRAI, Kinda?, M/M, Slow Burn, hlvrai slime rancher AU, man i dunno i'll add tags if i gotta, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25030336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RealNocturnalHours/pseuds/RealNocturnalHours
Summary: Gordon had a good life on the ranch. He had hard work to keep him busy, occasional contact with some of the other ranchers here, and plenty of free time to talk to himself and study the Far Far Range. It was a little lonely, but he made the best out of it.He didn't really realize there was somebody else in the area, that was a little unexpected.
Relationships: Benrey/Gordon Freeman, Bubby/Dr. Coomer (Half-Life)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 88





	The Lights Sure Are Pretty

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaaaaaaa first work on here! Inspired by Enby-Crow's slime rancher AU which I have picked up and started running with at the speed of light. I adore it and kinda wanted to use it just to try and get a feel for writing the hlvrai characters. Here's a link to their Tumblr. https://enby-crow.tumblr.com/

Gordon had a good life on the Far Far Range, he’d say. Black Mesa had been kind enough to give him a whole ranch to manage while he studied the world and researched whatever he could for them, and in turn he could make money off the ranch. It was a good trade-off, maybe at the sacrifice of not seeing his son for a little while, but he had been reassured his visit to the planet would be short and sweet if anything. Gordon still made sure to write letters to his kid and keep up with him via the semi-reliable email system Black Mesa had managed to establish. 

And besides endearing letters from Joshua asking about his new work at the ranch, there were others he quickly got dragged into doing favors for and trading with. It left him moving almost constantly, on his toes whenever he got a pause, but he had gotten used to it, and the scientist-turned-slime rancher was pretty happy with how well he acclimated to the new environment. It was almost as fast-paced and busy as the labs back on earth and he could appreciate the dynamics between himself and the system of fellow ranchers and researchers, and he found most all of them shared a sort of knowledge in science, much to his surprise. 

It made some days a little brighter, some days a little darker, running circles trying to fetch items for their trades or answer calls about doing favors as he juggled his own ranch work, but it was nice. Gordon enjoyed it in the end, and it felt good to help them out when he had the time to spare.

But this wasn’t a time to get sappy over his friends and life here, Gordon had a new problem on his hands and he wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it.

Someone was stealing from his echo nets.

Gordon didn’t know who it could be, or how he’d never seen them, but he knew after the fifth day of nothing but barren nets during his Ancient Ruins excursions that someone had to be taking from them. It was either that or the three that he had set up were all faulty, and he highly doubted it. His shabby lab didn’t fabricate nonfunctional equipment after all, and he’s never had a problem with things malfunctioning until now.

Gordon had to bite back a groan as he checked his nets once again, still devoid of any stray echoes they could have accumulated. No telltale chime, no colourful lights, nothing. The only echoes he could dredge up were few and far between among the worn down structures of the ruins, and even then it seemed like they’d get painfully scarce at times.

Not that they were important by any means, but Gordon wanted a few around the ranch, just because he found them pretty. He also found them useful out in the Far Far Range, as little trailmakers that helped him navigate trickier terrain without stopping to check his map. Furthermore, they were a good point of scientific curiosity, if Gordon really had to defend his interest in them. The echoes were strange light sources, traces of energy from something nobody even knew of, and it felt strangely pleasing to hold the little motes and just theorize where they could have come from.

In any case, he still didn’t have more than a handful over the course of the week and it was starting to grate on his nerves every time he came by to check. The rancher sighed in defeat, leaning against a sizable boulder and just sliding down to sit against it for a minute while he wracked his brain for any solutions. If the nets really were just malfunctioning, he’d need to deconstruct them and take them back to the lab to double check for problems. Maybe he could even convince Darnold or Tommy to give it a glance too, in case he was missing some sort of crucial detail in his observations. Gordon knew he hadn’t exactly been maintaining a good sleep schedule between work on the ranch and exchanges between his distant fellow ranchers, and he knew it’d be a bad idea to go in and fix faulty machinery of any sort on his own. 

On the other hand, maybe the slimes were taking the echoes out of the nets or something, if not some very unlikely stanger. He knew tabby slimes in particular liked to snatch stuff up and carry it in their mouths sometimes, and there were certainly a number of the tabbies in the ruins. It was much more likely compared to his first option, and one he might have mulled over excessively as the minutes ticked by. Maybe one of his friends was even teleporting over and taking his echoes to mess with him. It was something he could investegate much more immediately by simply hanging around the echo nets overnight and recovering from a hard day both working and wandering the ruins, making it his first and foremost solution to the problem. 

Decided on his next actions, Gordon carefully pulled off his vacpack and set it down next to him, patting it almost affectionately. He was well accustomed to just crashing and sleeping when he didn't make it back to his bed some nights, but his pack wasn't exactly forgiving whenever it happened, leaving his back sore whenever he kept it on too long.

And with the vacpack set aside, Gordon carefully lied down, looking up at the evening sky as the sun began to set. It was quite nice when the vibrant reds and oranges became brighter, dancing across the sky before fading into darkness and making way for the stars. A sort of serenity fell over the ruins, the quiet punctured only by the noise of slimes giggling or rolling about, an ambience Gordon had grown well accustomed to on the Range. Honestly it was nice, it made him feel less lonely out in the world. 

He kept an eye on his closest echo net as he rested on the ground, stealing glances at it throughout the night while he staved off sleep to keep watch. It was a touch difficult once exhaustion began to lap at his mind and body, but Gordon was nothing but persistent. 

The early night didn't yield any interesting results, at most Gordon spotted a few echoes being caught in the net he watched. The only thing that stopped him from springing to his feet to collect them was the fact he still needed to catch who was taking them first, and he continued to lie down with all the patience he could put toward the task.

It was still incredibly boring though, and none of the nearby slimes had an interest in the nets at all, busy eating and playing around as they always were more than anything. One or two even came closer to Gordon and tried to play before he nudged them off. Not that it was bad, but it was distracting, and he was already finding it hard to focus as the sleepiness really set in.

He wasn’t all too sure when exactly he actually fell asleep though. He was blinking, back against the grass and watching the echoes gather, and then the moon was high overhead and he blearily realized there was  _ something _ approaching that Grodon  _ knew _ wasn’t a slime. It was too tall, too quiet, and certainly, without a doubt, humanoid.

Another person! Gordon’s mind supplied uselessly as he tried to regain his bearings, not sitting up quite yet as his body tried to spring back from its abrupt nap. 

In the moonlight, cast in the glow of the echoes, Gordon could at least assume it was another rancher, as confounding as the thought was after his solitude in this part of the Far Far Range. They had a helmet and goggles, and a pair of antennae that bobbed with every movement. There was a dark blue, maybe black jacket, shorts, a pair of yellow boots and fingerless gloves, but honestly anything beyond the basic details still eluded Gordon in the poor lighting. And he watched with growing clarity as the figure reached up into the net and scooped up some of the echoes out, quickly transferring them into their own pack rather than using whatever gun extension they had.

"Hey!" Gordon finally managed to croak out as his motor skills finally started returning, and the other person jumped like they'd been burned by the echoes. The helmet swivelled to look at the disheveled rancher and Gordon's focus was snapped up by the bright, almost unnatural glow of their eyes. One green and one blue, caught in the shine of the echoes as this stranger stared. It only lasted a second before Gordon shook his head and glared.

"H-Hey, that's my fucking net." He tried again, starting to sit up and reach for his backpack with his good arm. The stranger just blinked and stared back in return. "Are you-Are you the one who's been stealing my stuff, man? Who even are you? Are you, like, new here or-"

"Do you have your credentials, uh, sir? Sir, I need to see some ID, this is-this is a no noob zone. Are you allowed to be here?" The man fired back suddenly, taking Gordon by surprise as he stood. The helmeted stranger had come a little closer now, and despite definitely being smaller Gordon still stepped back a little, bumping into the boulder he previously rested against.

"What? I don't know what-"

"You shouldn't-you shouldn't be out here without a permit bro, this is-this is a real high security place, it's-it's uh-super, confidential n' shit. You got your passport?"

"My _ passport _ ? What? Dude, the ruins aren't confidential! I can be here! You're stealing from me right now!" Gordon said, gesturing wildly towards the pilfered echo net with his good arm, and subsequently his vacpack's gun. The stranger, possibly a new rancher or something, just blinked and stared up at him, face flat. 

"...No I'm not."

"Wh-Yes you are! You just did! I just saw you steal those echoes from my net! Who are you anyways!?"

"...Benrey. You got a permit for that?"  _ Benrey _ asked, pointing back towards the echo net.

"No? What are you going on about, you don't fucking need a permit to build in the Range!"

"You need to calm down please, you're scaring people. Look, you're being scary, you're-your're all mean n' scaring people and shit. Can't do that man, you don't-you can't do that without a passport."

Gordon could feel his blood pressure rising just listening to this thief prattling on about security and passports. It didn't make a lick of sense to him. They were the only people around for miles too, Gordon literally couldn't scare anybody but this man, and he seemed pretty unbothered by the situation. It was ridiculous, probably some sort of distraction set up to confuse Gordon on purpose. He shook his head again and held onto his vacgun tight. 

"Don't fucking-don't call me an idiot, dumbass. Have you been stealing from my nets the past week?"

"Huh?" Benrey responded blankly.

"The-! My nets! Those! I built those here and-"

The rest of what Gordon was going to say was cut off my Benrey. "Oh yeah, those are freebies. You can't-uh, you can't call dibs on freebies, everyone knows that. No take-backs." 

"What!?"

"Hey, what's your name? If you don't-if you don't have a passport then you need to tell me sir. Security reasons."

You-! I have a passport! I just don't-why would I keep it on me!? Why should I tell you shit, you're stealing my echoes that my net collected!" 

"Well that's sucks for you bro. They're not-they're not that important, you need to calm down before you scare more people, being a big bitch." Benrey sniffed almost disdainfully, before turning back around and returning to the echo net to scoop out the few remaining lights trapped in it. Anger surged up in Gordon in a flash, hot and indignant towards this stranger. With a click he pulled the trigger of his vacpack and aimed it at the echoes, and watched as they slipped away from the thief's hands and we're safely collected in his tanks. 

"Whuh, hey!" Benrey looked back at him, although he didn't actually seem all too upset by the development. For a moment Gordon wondered if he even had a vacgun attached to his own pack, if that was possible. It didn't look like it at a glance.

"They're mine, you ass. Quit stealing them from me, go make your own nets and shit!"

"You're a killjoy, fuckin', uh, no-name killjoy. Boo. Gonna make a callout post on you because you don't even have your ID on you, bet you can't even remember your own name."

"Wh-Yes I can! I'm Gordon Freeman! the-I'm the guy who owns the ranch, down south! I don't need to show you my ID, you don't need to see it! Why the hell do you even want to see-what are you doing?" Gordon paused in his little tirade as Benrey's attention turned away from him, to the pack slung over his shoulders instead. It lit up as he opened it, full of lights he must have snatched from Gordon's other two nets as well, before he pulled out a blue echo and held it up.

"Hey, what-" Gordon tried to repeat himself as Benrey came closer again, and he was left bumping into the rock behind him a second time before all of a sudden that echo was in his face, nearly blinding compared to the dark glow of night around him. It left him reeling with how sudden it was. "What the fuck!?"

"You need to calm down." Benrey answered like it was the most obvious thing in the world. And it only infuriated Gordon a little more as he dropped his vacgun to bat the echo away and blink the spots out of his eyes, disoriented. The little orb was amazingly warm when he touched it though, sending little zings of sensation through his fingers as he grasped it and leaving them almost tingling. It was a distraction or something for sure, maybe even an attack from this Benrey stranger, but oddly Gordon felt the indignance and irritation fade with his hand wrapped around the echo. He'd never really touched them, despite his fascination with them, and the feeling it gave off was completely unexpected but pleasant.

Gordon must have gotten carried away in the almost numbing feeling the little echo gave off, because when he finally pried his attention from it Benrey was nowhere to be seen. Another wave of prickling irritation overcame him at the fact he must have run off with the other echoes, and he finally pulled his hand away to scoop his vacgun back up, sucking down the blue mote before it could take his attention again. 

For a moment Gordon stood there, hand fuzzy and spots still dancing across his vision as his body ached, overworked and unrested. The moon still hung high overhead, and he could see slimes still playing about, a few new phosphors springing up to join the fun. And Gordon groaned to himself quietly, resigned to checking his other two nets nearby, predictably empty much to his disappointment. This Benrey had polished them clean and gotten away scott-free with Gordon's rightful echoes. And Gordon hadn't even  _ thought _ about anyone living close enough to even cross paths with, let alone steal from him. He could only wonder how long this had been happening before his echo nets, how many times he might have almost run into this odd stranger before now.

"God, who the fuck even names their kid Benrey…" He mumbled to himself and slowly sat again, his tiredness winning out over everything else. He didn't have the energy to try returning back to his ranch at this hour, and the grass here wasn't half bad anyways. He could look into this thief more tomorrow too, maybe track him down when his body wasn't just screaming at him to go back to sleep already. He could even freak out about it properly if he was a little more well-rested.

That was a good plan, he told himself, nodding slightly despite nobody being there as he lied down. He didn't bother taking off his vacpack, only setting aside the gun and tucking his good arm close to settle down on his side even though he knew he'd regret it in the morning. He was too tired to reason, the tingling feeling the echo left in his hand still tapping away at his nerves almost soothingly.

It felt nice, honestly. A little weird and definitely suspicious, but nice in the moment. Gordon could appreciate it while he drifted off, tired and defeated, but aware that someone was out there, and definitely stealing from his echo nets. 

He could deal with it tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> brrrrr my writing skills are rusty as heck but hopefully i can get into the swing of this. Thank you for reading!


End file.
